


comme l'aube

by jeanandjeremy



Series: the survivor [2]
Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kind of..., M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, will add more tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:30:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7790299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanandjeremy/pseuds/jeanandjeremy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For years, Jean Moreau didn't think he had a future worth living. He didn't even dare to dream of one.<br/>Now, he's playing with the USC Troyans, wearing red and gold and sporting a brand new sunburn every week. There are teammates in the locker room that won't help punish him whenever he messes up. There's a rainbow-haired girl in South Carolina writing him silly texts when he feels like he's drowning. And thenthere's the idiotic captain with puppy eyes that takes him to the beach and sings Taylor Swift at the top of his lungs.<br/>He still doesn't know how he feels about being alive, but now he has enough to figure it out. At least sometimes he dares to hope so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	comme l'aube

**Author's Note:**

> chapters will get longer, i promise. this is just the prologue, also the majority of the story will take place at usc. i'll also add some more tags and tw, but in this chapter there's already some semi-graphic references to torture/abuse and suicidal thoughts and those and even worse stuff will be kinda present throughout the whole story. that's just jean, i guess.  
> if you're french, i'm sorry for destroying your language. i suck at french. gahhh.  
> also i hope at least the title is translated correctly, it's supposed to mean: "like the dawn"

_prologue_

With a gasp, he awakes and clamps his hand over his mouth. He can't risk waking his roomate because of a nightmare-  
No, it wasn't a nightmare. It was something worse than that, a thousand times more painful. His whole life is a nightmare, his dreams offering him no escape because he's always either relieving one of his punishments or he gets a painful childhood memory, a short blissful moment, only to wake up and realize so much more intensely than before how much had been ripped away from him.  
This time it had been been his earliest memory again _(don't think about it, don't think about it)_ : Playing on the beach with his siblings, his grandparents watching from where there were sitting in the sand, splashing water in his little brother's face (fuck. his little brother.)  
He shakes his head, as if he can also shake the memory and the nauseous feeling off, pulls the blanket over his head and tries to get some more precious sleep. 

\--

Groaning, he rolls of the bed clumsily. Somehow, impossibly, his body hurts more than it ever has before. Shit, what had he done? He- No.  
Kevin is gone. _Kevin_ left. He knows this, yet he can't realize it. What are number 1 and 3 without number 2? Well, number 3 is like always, number 1's personal punching bag. Nothing could ever change that. It will only get worse now. Still, he knows that whatever pain he's feeling now won't be enough for Riko, who's always trying to transform any emotional problems he's having into physical pain for Jean. Maybe it's working. He sure as hell isn't stopping, so it must be doing something for him.  
He curses in French and flinches at his own words. French is forbidden. What's the point now, anyways? Nobody here anymore to talk to. Kevin's left.  
Kevin's left him.

\--

He pulls the black jacket over his black shirt, feeling the barely healed welts on his back scream in protest. Black, black, black. He longs for a small glimpse of the night sky, the stars _(that were always so beautiful to gaze at right over their beach home by Marseille, his older sister telling him about star signs and their meaning-)._ To stop his own poisonous thoughts, he presses down on his forearm where Riko left his mark with knives last night. It hurts, but pain is familiar.  
At the banquet, there is light and some of the women in their beautiful gowns remind him of his _maman quand elle..._ \- He squeezes his forearm again. Not now (not ever). And then there's this one girl: her hair is beautiful, it shimmers in multiple colors like a drop of water catching the sunlight. She's so _bright._. If it was possible, he feels like he could look at her for a very long time and not get bored. She's bright and she smiles and she lights up and she's everything he can never be. He looks away. 

\--

Nathaniel is a fool and Jean both wants him to stay and wants him to leave. Most of all, he wants to tear his own skin off. He's turned into what Kevin was for years, just another victim, watching the shiny new toy being abused and doing nothing about it. Sometimes, after endless sleepless hours, he tries to tell himself it's not the same. It is though. It's the exact same, just like Riko using the whip on him for the first time and Kevin standing in the corner and staring at the wall behind them, until the King ordered him to hold Jean down. Hold him down, like he's done with Neil so many times over the past two weeks. In the end, he takes a deep breath in when Neil is finally gone and then he tries to act like some of the guilt suffocating him is leaving his shoulders. It isn't. He doubts it ever will. There are many things he doubts will ever happen.

\--

When he meets her again, the fox girl with the hair, one of his fingers is broken again (he did it to himself - Riko ordered him to). This time he doesn't look away from her. Each time he returns to the nest, he feels like he might never come out again. Riko's been so angry lately. Each time he can breathe fresh air, he takes everything in, the more beautiful the better. And she's very beautiful. In a stolen moment, Riko looks over the court and she smiles at Jean like it's a secret. Instinctively, he smiles back. It feels weird. He can't remember the last time he smiled. The second the Raven King returns his attention back to the other two, the smile vanishes again. Renee's doesn't. There's something curious about it now, like a child that saw something it shouldn't have. Jean doesn't know what to make of that. 

\--

Back at the nest, he can't stop thinking about her. It's unbelievably stupid, he's distracted, earns himself even more punishments, yet still. Still...  
Her name is Renee. In the darkness, he wonders wether she knows how beautiful her name is. Renée, reborn.  
A few days later, his phone buzzes.  
_hey, jean. it's renee. from the foxes. how r u doing?_  
He reads the message five times. Then he reads it twice more, to calm himself. And one more time to memorize it, as he deletes it right afterwards. If Riko found it, he'd be dead. No, no, of course he wouldn't. He'd wish he was dead, but that's hardly a new feeling for Jean, so for once he just thinks _fuck it._  
The phone screen shines upon his face. It's not quite right, but it's something. His trembling finger hit the letters on the screen.  
_ok. and you, ça va?_  
That night, he doesn't dream. 

\--

They talk. He misses sleep to have meaningless conversations with her, every message carefully deleted as quickly as possible. This secret can't be discovered.  
It's not enough, of course. Sometimes her words keep him afloat, when it's just Riko and his words and knives and fists. He's tired though, so some times it's not enough.  
Some nights, he doesn't have the energy in him to respond. And somehow, she understands and still keeps sending him texts or smiley faces.  
A few times, he's written to her in french and one night, he gets a message that is so utterly wrong and hilarious, the kind of butchered french that only google translate could produce, he laughs. His roomate stirs, so he quickly hides it with a cough. For one the second there, he was alright. Almost enough.  
Almost.

\--

No, no, no more, please. Il n'y a aucune partie de son corps qui ne lui provoque pas l'agonie - It just hurts, hurts so fucking much. Everything, everything. Merde. _Merde._  
"Non, non, Riko, please. Riko, please, please. Je vais faire tous. I'll do anything. Just, please. No more. Pas plus..." The court is empty. Nobody hears him. The King and his men are long gone, so why won't the pain get better? If anything it's getting worse. He can hardly think, let alone move, but there's something in the pocket of his jeans. It's Renee- it's his phone.  
_help me. please. please._  
There's nothing else to say. He knows he's going to die. What he doesn't understand is the sudden fear. For the past years, he wanted nothing more than to end his miserable existence. He had it all planned out. Get out of Evermore once he graduated, get a gun, blow his brains out. And now, he's lying in a pool of his own blood, slowly wasting away and he's trying to hold on to life...  
What's wrong with him? His maman had always told him he was a fool. Maybe that's why she sold him. 

\--

He does not die. He doesn't know how he feels about that

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr so we can cry over this tragic idiot together: @jeanjeremy  
> also some feedback would be super duper cool. really it would make my day. :)))))


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